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Around 22 million people live in counties that are "cardiology deserts" and need to travel nearly 90 miles round trip to seek specialty heart care.

Millions of Americans likely to develop and die from heart disease live in cardiology deserts — areas of the country without a single heart specialist to care for them. 

New research published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology finds that nearly half of all counties in the U.S. lack a practicing cardiologist. 

Most of those counties are rural, with residents who tend to be sicker in general with complex medical problems.

Research suggests impact of pollution begins before conception by disrupting the development of the egg

Air pollution exposure can significantly decrease the chance of a live birth after IVF treatment, according to research that deepens concern about the health impacts of toxic air on fertility.

Pollutant exposure has previously been linked to increased miscarriage rates and preterm births, and microscopic soot particles have been shown to travel through the bloodstream into the ovaries and the placenta. The latest work suggests that the impact of pollution begins before conception by disrupting the development of eggs.

“We observed that the odds of having a baby after a frozen embryo transfer were more than a third lower for women who were exposed to the highest levels of particulate matter air pollution prior to egg collection, compared with those exposed to the lowest levels,” said Dr Sebastian Leathersich, a fertility specialist and gynaecologist from Perth who is due to present the findings on Monday at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting in Amsterdam.

The arrival on the market of many innovative treatments has been hampered by pharmaceutical companies’ business strategies

Darius is 15 years old and is a dazzling example of how medical research has advanced. Born with a rare and lethal genetic disease, early active cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy — CALD, the same condition that killed his older brother Danuk — the adolescent boy is today, healthy and happy in his hometown of Quintanar de la Orden, in the Spanish province of Toledo. His recovery has been thanks to a gene therapy called Skysona. A benevolent ­virus, a Trojan horse that was introduced into his body when the boy was five years old, it was able to replace the boy’s defective gene with a healthy one, thus saving his life.

But to the frustration of his doctors and other families, Darius’s treatment has not been available on the European market since 2021, due to a decision made by its pharmaceutical company Bluebird Bio that has left dozens of young people in the EU without the opportunity to follow Darius down the same path to survival. “It is difficult to comprehend,” says Carmen Sever, president of the European Lecodystrophies Association in Spain (ELA-Spain), which has helped patient associations to finance and develop the drug.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/14265062

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/14265061

Pregnant women enrolled in a federal aid program have better outcomes than those who are struggling to put food on the table, new research shows.

The new study, from a team at Ohio State University, found that women enrolled in WIC had a lower risk of poor pregnancy outcomes. Those outcomes included gestational diabetes, blood transfusion, preterm birth and stays in intensive care for mom and baby alike.

The study dovetails with concerns about Congressional proposals to slash WIC funding for the first time.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/14149369

Insurers are looking to expand coverage of sexual health services and gender affirming care in the wake of lawsuits over allegedly discriminatory policies.

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cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/14149198

A federal district court judge on Wednesday temporarily halted parts of a nondiscrimination rule that would have kept insurers and medical professionals from denying hormone therapy, gender transition surgeries and similar medical care for transgender people.

U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. sided with 15 states that had argued the language the rule was based on — the 1972 Title IX nondiscrimination law — encompasses biological sex, but not gender identity. Guirola’s injunction applies nationwide to the Affordable Care Act rule, which would have gone into effect Friday.

One in eight people on Medicaid reported losing coverage under the safety-net insurance program about six months into redeterminations in four Southern states, according to a study published in JAMA Health Forum.
About half of the survey respondents who were unenrolled from Medicaid became uninsured in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Texas, according to the study. Twenty-seven percent had employer-sponsored insurance at the time of the survey, and the rest found other coverage. 
Those who lost Medicaid coverage during redeterminations reported higher rates of delays and affordability challenges when trying to access care, according to the survey. 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17215463